Victoria Abril Movies
One of Europe's most popular and respected actresses, Victoria Abril has made her mark in more than 60 films produced in France, Italy, and her native Spain. First introduced to American audiences through the work of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who directed her in the controversial Atame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, 1990), the sensual, brown-eyed actress has gained a Stateside cult following, but remains thoroughly European in her choice of films and the roles she plays.Abril first earned wide recognition in Spain as a 14-year-old model on the popular television shows Uno, dos, tres, responda otra vez and 625 lineas. Born Victoria Merida Rojas in Malaga on July 4, 1959, she began studying as a ballet dancer at the age of seven, but following her celebrated turn on TV, segued into acting in the mid-'70s. Abril made her major screen debut in Vincente Aranda's Cambio de Sexo, a 1976 drama that cast her as an effeminate young man who undergoes a sex change. That same year, the actress made her first English-language film, Robin and Marian, in which she played the relatively minor role of a Spanish queen. She went on to do prolific work for the rest of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, and in 1990 had her first collaboration with Almodóvar, for whom she starred as a drug-addicted porn actress taken hostage by an obsessive fan (Antonio Banderas) in Atame!. The film was a success in Spain -- where Abril earned a Goya Best Actress nomination for her performance -- and proved to be a controversial sensation in the States, where its plot outraged certain feminist groups. Abril collaborated with Almodóvar on two more films, Tacones Lejanos (1991) -- in which she played the estranged daughter of an actress (Marisa Paredes), and Kika (1993) -- in which she had a supporting role as an over-the-top tabloid TV program hostess.
Abril scored particular critical acclaim as a darkly amorous landlady in Vincente Aranda's Amantes (1991), winning a Best Actress Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for her performance. Further acclaim came her way with Nadie Hablara de Nosotras Cuando Hayamos Muerto (1995), for which her portrayal of an alcoholic prostitute earned her a Goya and a Best Actress award at the San Sebastian Film Festival. A starring role in the French romantic comedy Gazon Maudit (1995), which cast her as a housewife torn between her unfaithful husband and a butch female truck driver, further increased Abril's popularity. She continued to star in films that emphasized her playful, flamboyant sexuality, maintaining her reputation as one of Europe's most colorful and vibrant performers. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
- 1982
Based on a 1943 book of the same title by Camilo José Cela, Colmena features the comings and goings of a wide variety of characters, all trying to survive in a poverty-stricken Madrid during World War II. Rather than feature any single story line, these people from all walks of life cross paths almost randomly as they come to a café to sip their one cup of coffee and work on a book, or pick up a prostitute, or get their shoes shined, or play billiards, or just warm themselves on a cold winter's day. This primary setting is complemented by a brothel where a dirt-poor journalist sleeps if there is a room available that night, while during the day he tries to make ends meet one way or another. The demeanor of the people in the café or in the brothel effectively conveys the atmosphere of a long-lost era that may have had hardships but also brought a subtle sense of camaraderie to very disparate human beings. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Victoria Abril, Ana Belén, (more)
- 1982
A young woman is abandoned by her lover after she tells him she is pregnant. Deeply depressed and longing for home, she boards a train out of town. Unfortunately a terrible train wreck ensues. She survives and ends up taking on the identity of one of the dead passengers. Now comfortable and secure that her child will have some claim to legitimacy, the woman is happy. Unfortunately, her dead-beat lover shows up and promises to make trouble if she doesn't pay up. The melodramatic plot is based on a story by Cornell Woolrich and was made twice before as No Man of Her Own (1932 and 1949 respectively). In 1996 it was remade again as the romantic comedy Mrs. Winterbourne starring Riki Lake and Shirley MacLaine. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Nathalie Baye, Francis Huster, (more)
- 1982
When the lights go off at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, no one suspects anything more than the usual power outage -- until the Secretary General, Santiago Carrillo, ends up murdered in that short span of time. The Party calls in a private investigator, and the government asks a rabid anti-communist to find out who committed this crime. From that point onward, the KGB and the CIA are somehow involved, and the climate degenerates into one of torture and sex, though not both at the same time. As the private investigator bumbles his way from one predicament to the other, the solution to the crime seems in no danger of immediate discovery. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Patxi Andion, Victoria Abril, (more)
This violent spaghettiesque western was filmed in 3-D and chronicles the adventures of a brave gunslinger who is determined to save his fiancee from her abductors, a brutal group of white slavers. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tony Anthony, Gene Quintano, (more)
- 1980
The slow mental and emotional disintegration of the mother of an autistic child is the main theme of this evocative psychological drama by J.A. Salgot. Since incest and murder are also involved, this is not exactly a film for all audiences. Clara (Victoria Abril) is graphically shown giving birth and subsequently followed as she tries to cope with the ever-more obvious autism of her new son. She leads a normal life as a keypunch operator, but her son's affliction takes its toll. She experiments with illegal drugs, eventually loses her job, and slowly recedes into a shell that is almost as impenetrable as her son's. There seems to be no ordinary way out of her gradual decline, no solution to her problem that started long ago when she refused to give her son up to an institution. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Victoria Abril
- 1979
Slow in parts but still engaging and well-acted, this drama by Vicente Aranda explores the changing nature of a former fascist, Luis Forest (Lautaro Murua), and his relationship to his niece Mariana (Victoria Abril). Luis has retired to the seacoast to devote himself to writing his memoirs and ruminating over his failed marriage. His sister is worried about him and so she sends her daughter Mariana to check up on how he is doing. The wildly carefree Mariana and her silent photographer friend shake up Luis' staid world. Slowly, Mariana's taunting and teasing break down Luis' intellectual barriers and as that happens she becomes more interested in him. As flashbacks indicate, Luis was not the militant fascist everyone imagined. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lautaro Murúa, Victoria Abril, (more)
- 1977
Jose Luis Lopez Vasquez stars in Dona Perfecta as a young citizen of Madrid who responds to his aunt's summons to her village with curiosity and some skepticism. She has arranged for him to marry her daughter, his first cousin. Romantically, everything works out wonderfully, as the two fall in love and are completely willing to wed. However, a closer examination of the young city-dweller by his prospective in-laws has a quite different result on the family. The story of this film is based on a 19th-century novel by Benito Perez Galdo. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- José Luis Lopez Vasquez, Julia Gutiérrez Caba, (more)
Though the story told in Robin and Marian is unfamiliar to most audiences, it is actually quite faithful to several of the ancient Robin Hood legends. During the Crusades, Robin (Sean Connery) is still loyal to King Richard the Lionheart (Richard Harris), but even he has trouble adjusting to the monarch's ever-increasing paranoia and lunacy. After Richard's death, Robin returns to England, his first visit to his home turf in 20 years. He looks up his beloved Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn, last seen in 1967's Wait Until Dark), who is now a middle-aged nun. No sooner do Robin and Marian renew their relationship than the aging Merry Men demand Robin's services in thwarting their old foe, the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw). Marian is aghast that the long-standing feud between Robin and the sheriff threatens to expand into wholesale bloodshed. The two venerable enemies agree to one last mano a mano battle -- only to watch helplessly as the all-out war they'd tried to avoid commences anyway. Both the tragic climax and Robin's last, defiant arrow shot are drawn directly from authentic Robin Hood ballads of the 14th and 15th centuries. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, (more)
- 1976
- R
Themes long forbidden in Spain under the Franco dictatorship began to be explored in the years just following his demise. In this 1976 film, an unhappy and very effeminate man (played by a woman, Victoria Abril), experiences one difficulty after another. As a boy in Cataluña, his father attempts to teach him to "be a man." These lessons include taking him to a big-city whorehouse to have sex. At the bordello, he successfully avoids having sex with a woman, but when he sees a transvestite revue which culminates in the actors revealing their actual genitalia, he is fascinated. He runs away from home, learns to be a hairdresser, and develops a transvestite act of his own. After numerous love affairs with men, he eventually realizes his transsexual nature and goes to another country to have a sex-change operation. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- 1976
On long summer weekends, Juan (Alfredo Landa) is in the habit of hopping on his motorcycle in Madrid and driving for many hours to Torremolinos, a popular hangout for foreign tourists. There, he indulges in his fondness for romancing foreign girls. In this movie, which won a Gold Prize at the 1977 Moscow Film Festival, the people he meets on his journey form a microcosm of modern Spain. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Alfredo Landa, Paco Algora, (more)
- 197z
A troubled wife reminisces about the events from her marriage that may have led to her daughter's suicidal depression in this Spanish drama. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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